I feel like I'm always stopping to reflect on how quickly time passes in my mind. Time is a funny thing; it has a way of feeling like it either passes at a snail's pace or at a breakneck speed (nowhere in between). The fact is that time is strict. It passes steadily and unceasingly. Time, as we know it, can be brutal. Hours fly by, and quickly they turn into days, weeks, months, years, decades, and before you know it, a lifetime's worth of time has passed. Time is a precious commodity, and it always seems like we need more. We structure our lives around time--alarms to make sure we wake up early enough to be prepared for the day's happenings, calendars and appointment books to remind us of obligations we have, watches and clocks to keep us in the know of what time it is, rigid schedules that are designed to help us make the best use of our time each day. Honestly, I fall into all of these categories of being controlled by time. As a new teacher, I am forever wishing for more time to prepare lessons, more time to teach topics before the dreaded EOIs roll around, more time to spend giving quality feedback to student work...most of all, more time to sleep in after I try to do all of these things in one evening! Time is a heavy thing to ponder, but it's really an aside to the main topic I really set out to write about tonight.
These thoughts about time were a tangent from a thought I had the other day. It was nothing that I felt was too profound, but it was just deep enough that I wanted to write about it and get other people's perspectives...all while continuously ironing out my train of thought.
I was thinking about how much time has already passed since Mimi passed away in March (Four months this past Sunday...yikes!) More than that, I realized that the day of her death, March 26th, will no longer be the same in my mind. It will forever be the day that my beloved Mimi breathed her last and returned to her Lord, who she loved the most. As I considered the fact that March 26th would forevermore be a day of remembrance and sadness, I wondered what March 26th was like for me every year before this year. It very well could have been a joyful day for me at some point, possibly when I may have had fun times with friends or gone on some cool adventure. Moreover, I wondered what it would have been like in any of the 21 March 26ths I had lived through in the past, if I would have found out that on that day in 2015, that would be the day Mimi died.
Obviously, knowing that would have robbed me of lots of joy. Knowing myself, I would have found myself living in fear of March 26, 2015. I would have lamented the fact that my time with Mimi was slipping away quickly instead of soaking up carefree time and conversation with her.
On the flipside, I also considered my nephews' birthdays. I thought about how those six days hold such joy for my family. I pondered how many times we had passively gone through each of their birthdays (before they were born), treating it like another day, or perhaps having a really bad day, not knowing the joy that awaited us in years to come!
I considered the fact that the days I currently fill with my varied routines, could one day turn into one of the best (or worst) days of my life. God willing, of course, an engagement, my wedding day, my children's birthdays, career highlights and other days are ones that will quickly turn into joyful anniversaries that will forever be a part of my life. Of course, the joyful days are punctuated with more melancholy days that consist of diagnoses with major illnesses, deaths, injuries, tragedies...all things I don't allow myself to consider too often, only because my mind can't handle falling down that rabbit hole. More than that, it robs me of the joy of now.
Sometimes the only thing that gets me through a bad day is the thought that even if today was a bad day, that doesn't mean that it'll be just as bad in a year. I mean, last year at this time, I was preparing to finish an awful summer class with a broken heart, loads of stress, and uncertainty about my future. Now, I'm preparing to begin my career as an educator, back at home with my family, and dating an amazing boyfriend who continually amazes me! A year can change a lot of things...It's funny what time can do.
(Sorry for the disjointed thoughts, but this has really been on my mind lately, and I had to get it down before it slipped away!)
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